Trends – Should Marketers Swim the Tide?

Ever since the human brain started innovating the sales and marketing process, we’ve been presented with a combination of exciting, ridiculous and huge trends. It all happened so fast that we didn’t have enough time to finish our cup of coffee before some geek decided to disrupt the coffee distribution industry.

So what are we looking at here? Is the need to catch up with trends greater than the value of the trends themselves?

The first ever TV commercial that was ever made was that of a watch brand. Ironically, you stare at the screen for the first 7 seconds watching a blinking black and white map before you hear a voice that says; “America runs on Bulova time.”

We’ve come a long way from that age of talking about the product to letting the customers experience the product. And in between that huge transition, data, and data analytics have played a large role in our demand for increased attention and returns. And in this age and time, we realise a new catch phrase; “Big data”. As if the data we have been consuming isn’t big enough already, now pundits are intently “educating” us to set our eyes on this new trend.

So what should we, the marketers, do if we are not yet doing anything in this context?

Big Data is and will probably be a huge enterprise domain.

This would include customer behaviors, geo-location, retention, location intelligence and brand loyalty. That’s a lot to chew on if you are used to simple marketing automation systems.
It all boils down to your client’s infrastructure and their blueprint for expansion. As marketers, our role is to guide them, to pave the way for these client brands to establish a basic understanding of Big Data and to match their existing infrastructure to sound strategies. The beauty of it all is that we are in some exciting times. The data available for us to sell to our customers in the best shape ever.

Swim the tide if you must, but don’t go farther than you can handle – otherwise, you drown!

Robert was a Jedi in his previous life. Harnessing the power of the nuclear energy released by a huge particle accelerator, Robert can practically jump from filmmaking to coding without disturbing the time-space continuum.
In his free time, he sweep picks Mixolydian mode on his vintage Gibson while using surgical-precision focus on his social media accounts.
Robert makes a living crafting epic content out of thin air.